Reporters on the Job

March 20, 2008

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SOURCE: WorldPublicOpinion.org/Rich Clabaugh–STAFF

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• Silenced by Pirates: When Sara Simpson heard that pirates were attacking Nigerian fishermen, she went to the fishing docks in Lagos to see for herself (see story). She was struck by how eerily quiet it was.

"There are no trawlers going out, so there are no fish coming in. Usually there's a boisterous market packed with women who come to haggle over the price of the fish as they come off the boats," says Sara.

Instead, she saw scores of memorial posters of fishermen recently lost at sea – all killed during pirate attacks. She was told that now that the trawlers are staying in port, the pirates are raiding the smaller, dugout canoes used by traditional fishermen. "The pirates steal the outboard motors from these fishermen, abandoning them on the high seas with only paddles to make their way back to shore," she says.